Bard envisions the liberal arts institution as the hub of a network, rather than a single, self-contained campus. Numerous institutes for special study are available on and off campus, connecting Bard students to the greater community.

The Center for Civic Engagement at Bard College embodies the fundamental belief that education and civil society are inextricably linked. In an age of information overload, it is more important than ever that citizens be educated and trained to think critically and be actively engaged with issues affecting public life.

2013 Spring Exhibitions and Projects

"less like an object more like the weather"

Sunday, March 24, 2013 – Sunday, May 26, 20131–4 pm

Hessel Museum of ArtThe Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS Bard) presents 14 exhibitions and projects curated by second-year students in its graduate program in curatorial studies and contemporary art. The students have organized these exhibitions as part of the requirements for the master of arts degree.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.

Sheva Fruitman: Evidence - Blue

Friday, April 26, 2013 – Friday, June 7, 2013

Charles P. Stevenson, Jr. Library VitrinesSheva Fruitman is a multi-faceted talent. A former photography major at Bard, she has worked, and exhibited frequently, as an artist, photographer, and designer. For the display cases in the Stevenson Library she has designed an installation that features some examples of her creations, organized around the theme of blue. The exhibition includes photographs, found objects, collages made from an old issue of Vogue magazine, and examples of her jewelry. She likes a recent quotation by Pico Iyer as a statement of her views about art making and living a creative life:

“it’s only by remaining constantly mobile, keeping your voice as fluid and versatile as the world around you, that you can begin to be true to who you really are.”Opening reception on April 26, 4:30–7:00 p.m.

National Climate Seminar: Pastor and Boyce on Co-benefits and Climate Justice

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Manuel Pastor, Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at University of South Carolina and James Boyce, Professor of Economics at UMASS joined the National Climate Seminar on May 1, 2013 to discuss policy measures that address environmental justice and climate change through mitigation efforts to help those low-income communities that are disproportionately affected by air pollution.

Wednesday, May 1, 20137 pm

Faculty Seminars

Spring 2013

Wednesday, May 1, 20137 pm

Olin, Room 102

Philip Johns

presentsBring ‘em back alive: Genomics in the jungle

There is a rich tradition of exploration and collection in the biological sciences. Although we might think of such studies as remnants of the 20th or even 19th Centuries, genomics has become accessible enough that we can ask meaningful genetic and evolutionary questions based on explorative field biology. In this talk, Philip Johns recounts a recent research venture he and a student undertook in Borneo and Malaysia, attempts to put this into a historical context, and outlines a vision of combining genomics, field, and behavioral biology.

This seminar will be held in Olin 102 beginning at 7:00 p.m.Please join us for a reception in the Olin atrium at 6:30 p.m.

Degree Recital: Logan Walsh, baritone

Wednesday, May 1, 20138 pm

László Z. Bitó '60 Conservatory BuildingBaritone Logan Walsh has sung leading and supporting roles in opera, operetta, recital repertoire, sacred music, musical theater, and contemporary music. He collaborated with composer Jake Heggie on a recital of the composer’s songs and arias from Moby Dick, The End of the Affair, and Three Decembers. In 2012, he performed the role of Charlie in Heggie’s Three Decembers with the International Vocal Arts Institute in Virginia and sang the role of Krumpelblatt in the world premiere of Elena Langer’s opera Four Sisters. He spent three summers with the Ohio Light Opera Company, participating in over 150 performances including Count Berezowski in Victor Herbert’s The Fortune Teller, Pauvel von Paulovitch in Franz Lehár’s The Count of Luxembourg, the Usher in Gilbert & Sullivan’s Trial by Jury, and Sam Jenkins in Gershwin’s Of Thee I Sing. Walsh has performed with training programs including the Crested Butte Music Festival, OperaWorks in Los Angeles, and the Crittenden Summer Opera Studio. While completing his Bachelor of Music in Voice Performance at the University of North Texas, he sang the title role in Le Nozze di Figaro, Albert in Werther, Barone Duophol in La Traviata, and Oscar in Regina.

Degree Recital: Abigail Levis, mezzo-soprano

Thursday, May 2, 20138 pm

László Z. Bitó '60 Conservatory Building

Named "Debut Artist of the Year" by the Joy in Singing Foundation, lyric mezzo-soprano Abigail Levis is emerging as one of the most exciting young singers of today. The Boston Musical Intelligencer praised her for her “dramatic style” and “high level of technical ability” in her performance of Israel in Egypt with the Handel and Haydn Society in Symphony Hall. She is currently a student in the Graduate Vocal Arts program at the Bard Conservatory where she studies with Edith Bers and Dawn Upshaw. As a professional singer, Ms. Levis has appeared as a soloist with the American Symphony Orchestra, Ars Lyrica Houston, and the New York Opera Exchange in addition to the Handel and Haydn Society. She is also the winner of several competitions, including the 2010 University of Houston Concerto Competition, the 2010 National Orpheus Vocal Competition, the 2011 Five Towns Music Competition in Long Island, and the 2011 Young Texas Artist competition.

Saul Bellow at Bard

Sunday, May 5, 20131–2 pm

Campus Center, Red Room 202Saul Bellow's son Gregory will discuss his new memoir, Saul Bellow's Heart, with particular attention to the time Saul Bellow (1915–2005) taught at Bard (1953–1954). Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book Award (three times), Bellow lived in Tivoli and wrote two of his best-known books there: Henderson the Rain King and Herzog.

Quoted in Time magazine, Bellow declared: "One year at Bard seemed like ten. No one knows the demands a progressive school makes upon a teacher."

Accompanied by his two brothers, Adam and Dan, Greg will lead a literary/historical discussion of Saul Bellow's years at and around Bard.Sponsored by: Libraries at Bard College.

Monday, May 6, 20133–5 pm

In her research-based media practice, Kelly Nipper works with dancers, generating photographs, videos, and events. She explores how and where the formal and social fields of each of these mediums relate, paying particular attention to their spatial, temporal, and expressive capacities. Nipper considers the acts of transcription and translation as she shifts between modes of production that have distinct sets of properties and demands. Repetition and inscription become processes through which to experience ideas and concepts as forms or things.

Artist BioNipper’s work with performance expands upon her background in photography, film, and video. She received her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 1995 after studying within the photography program. Her BFA from Minneapolis College of Art and Design, received in 1993, was in media arts with a concentration in photography. Among Nipper’s most important interlocutors has been Allan Kaprow—the artist who conceived of Environments and Happenings—for whom Nipper worked for several years as studio manager and archivist.Nipper has been the subject of solo exhibitions and performances at several national and international institutions, including Kunsthaus Zürich; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tramway, Glasgow; and Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston. She has been included in numerous important group exhibitions, including Danser Sa Vie, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2011); 2010: Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2010); While Bodies Get Mirrored. An Exhibition about Movement, Formalism and Space, Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich (2010); and Dance with Camera, Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia (2009). The recipient of a Louis Comfort Foundation Tiffany Award and a Performa Commission, Nipper’s work is in the public collections of the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and The Israel Museum in Jerusalem, among others.

About The Speakers Series: Each semester the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College hosts a regular program of lectures by the foremost artists, curators, art historians, and critics of our day, situating the school and museum’s concerns within the larger context of contemporary art production and discourse. Lectures are open to students and faculty, as well as to the general public, and will also be documented through video and/or audio recordings, which will reside in the CCS Bard Library and Archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.

Degree Recital: Philippe Brunet, trumpet

Tuesday, May 7, 201312 pm

László Z. Bitó '60 Conservatory Building

Canadian experimentalist, Philippe Brunet, trumpet, has been an active performer all across North America and Europe appearing as a soloist, chamber and orchestral musician. He was a Fellowship Brass Quintet member at the Aspen Music Festival, Artist in Residence at the Dartington International Music Festival, and will be an Orchestra Fellow at the Atlantic Music Festival this summer. As an advocate for New Music, he has collaborated with composers on over a dozen new works.

Philippe is currently in the Graduate Certificate Program at the Bard College Conservatory. He earned a Master of Fine Arts from California Institute of The Arts and a BMus from the Schulich School of Music at McGill University in Canada. His primary teachers were Edward Carroll, Thomas Stevens, Russell DeVuyst, Steven Burns and Carl Abach. Philippe will be pursuing a Doctorate of Musical Arts at the University of Miami in the Fall as a Mancini Fellow

What Economists Can Learn from Human Rights Law

Tuesday, May 7, 20134:45 pm

Hegeman 102Philip HarveyRutgers School of Law

Philip L. Harvey is professor of law and economics at Rutgers University School of Law. He received his B.A. degree from Yale University, his Ph.D. in economics from the New School for Social Research, and his J.D. from Yale Law School. After clerking for the Honorable Robert L. Carter in the Southern District of New York, he worked as a Litigation Associate specializing in employment disputes at the New York law firm of Debevoise and Plimpton. He also has been a Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation, a Visiting Professor of Law and Economics at the Yale School of Organization and Management, and was the first Joanne Woodward Professor of Public Policy at Sarah Lawrence College. Professor Harvey's research focuses on public policy options for securing economic and social human rights, with a particular emphasis on the right to work. He teaches Contracts, Labor and Employment Law, Law & Economics, and Social Welfare Law and Policy.

*pizza will be served

This talk is part of the ongoing Economics seminar series, which is dedicated to furthering the exchange of economic ideas in the greater Bard community.

Shamanism, Vegetalismo, and the Aesthetics of Healing

Tuesday, May 7, 20135 pm

François Demange (MA Anthropology) has been training with indigenous medicine people and practicing their healing methods since 1996 in both the Peruvian Amazon and in North America. He is considered one of the most experienced Westerners in the practice of the traditional Amazonian medicine called Vegetalismo, which is defined as the plant spirit medicine practice of that region. François is also a follower of the Red Path; he is a pipe carrier, a Sundancer, and has been adopted by the Dakota Nation. He uses a combination of spiritual and energetic methods to read, diagnose and address the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual imbalance in his patients. He is a Reiki Master and Co-Founder of Sacred Medicine Foundation.

Between Global Capitalism and Global Warming: Saudi Arabia, the US and the Ends of the Arab Spring

Tuesday, May 7, 20137 pm

Campus Center, Weis CinemaIn 1945 the State Department declared that the young kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s oil resources constituted “a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history.” The United States, which emerged as the preeminent global power after World War II, forged a lasting alliance with the house of al-Saud. That alliance has been shaken on more than one occasion, but grew particularly tight after the 1973/74 “energy crisis.”

This talk will probe key aspects of the evolving partnership between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.

Why have successive U.S. presidents committed the country to “energy independence” but failed to deliver, despite the threats posed by global warming?

What does Saudi Arabia and the oil wealth of the Arabian Gulf have to do with the ascendance of finance within global capitalism?

How have the strains between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia after 9/11 manifested in their respective approaches to the so-called Arab Spring?

What does the alliance mean today for Americans and for the pro-democracy movements of the Middle East?

Charles Anderson is a Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Bard College. Charles was trained at New York University in the joint program in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and History. He is broadly interested in the social and political history of the modern Middle East.

Charles has articles and reviews published or forthcoming in Arab Studies Journal, International Journal of Middle East Studies, and Review of Middle East Studies, and is a member of the editorial team of the Arab Studies Journal.

Wednesday, May 8, 20137 pm

Bard College Orchestra Spring Concert

Wednesday, May 8, 20138 pm

Fisher Center, Sosnoff TheaterFeaturing the winners of Bard's annual concerto competition, Maxwell McKee (piano), Emily Donato (soprano), Christopher Beroes-Haigis (cello), along with guest conductor David Bloom, the Bard College Orchestra, under the direction of Geoff McDonald will present works by Mozart, Boccherini, Dvorak, Gade, and de Falla. This concert is free and open to the public.Sponsored by: Bard College Community Orchestra; Music Program.

Friday, May 10, 201312 pm

Premiere Performance of the Bard Baroque Ensemble

Friday, May 10, 20134:30 pm

László Z. Bitó ’60 Conservatory Building

The Bard Baroque Ensemble presents Besides Bach, a treasury of historical music from composers including Schütz, Scarlatti, Biber, and others who directly influenced the era's most well-known musician. Featuring Caldara's vocal canons, Frescobaldi's trombone canzonas, and Corelli's flashy Folia variations, this program shows how the intense beauty of baroque music blossomed well before anyone knew the name of J.S. Bach.

About the group:

The newly-formed Bard Baroque Ensemble is dedicated to the exploration and performance of music from the 17th and 18th centuries. Comprised of talented musicians from the Conservatory and the College, the group features vocalists alongside string, wind, brass, and percussion soloists. Their repertoire ranges from chamber sonatas and canzonas, to sacred motets, secular arias and even country dance music. In weekly rehearsals, ensemble members learn various historical performance practices and improvisatory techniques, which are then incorporated into the their musical interpretations. Future plans in the 2013-14 season include performances of Couperin's Les Nations and a semi-staged Scarlatti serenata. Sponsored by: Music Program.

Degree Recital: Marie Marquis, soprano

Christina Giuca, piano

Saturday, May 11, 20133 pm

László Z. Bitó '60 Conservatory BuildingMarie Marquis, soprano, a Mississippi native and recent graduate of the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, enjoys singing a diverse selection of repertoire from renaissance to classical to contemporary. She has been featured on WYPR with the Peabody Renaissance Ensemble, and performed as a soloist with the group in several concerts. Recently Marie has appeared on stage as Norina from Don Pasquale at the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival, as Judy in Lee Hoiby’s This is the Rill Speaking in Baltimore’s Theater Project, and as a soldier in the premier of Libby Larsen’s Stone Soup at Songfest in Malibu. Last year, she won both the state and regional NATS student auditions in the Mid-Atlantic Region and was the recipient of the Charles M. Eaton prize in voice and the Azalia H Thomas prize from the Peabody Institute. Marie holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Peabody as well as a BA in French language and literature from Johns Hopkins University, and is currently a second year student in the Graduate Vocal Arts Program.For more information, call 845-752-2380, or e-mail treed@bard.edu.

Degree Recital: Jacquelyn Stucker, soprano

Sunday, May 12, 20131 pm

László Z. Bitó '60 Conservatory BuildingA resident of Irmo, South Carolina, soprano Jacquelyn Stucker has appeared with the Beijing Radio Symphony Orchestra, American Symphony Orchestra, Furman University Symphony Orchestra and the Bard College Conservatory Symphony Orchestra as a soprano soloist in Mendelssohn’s Elias, Haydn’s Harmoniemesse, Bach’s B Minor Mass and Brahms’ Ein Deutches Requiem. She has performed the roles of Donna Elvira, La Contessa di Almaviva, and Irina in the world premiere of Elena Langer’s Four Sisters. Most recently, Stucker was featured as a young artist in I SING BEIJING, and she ardently supports the performance of traditional and contemporary Chinese classical music in the West. She is a seasoned half-marathoner and is currently studying to be certified as a personal trainer with the American College of Sports Medicine.Sponsored by: Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program.

Speakers Series: João Ribas

What is it that makes today's solo exhibitions so different, so appealing?

Monday, May 13, 20133–5 pm

CCS Bard, Seminar Room 1The solo exhibition is conspicuously overlooked in the voluminous literature on curatorial practice and the historiography of exhibitions. This even though it plays a significant role in forming the conventions of exhibition making since the 18th century.

What accounts for this repressed in curatorial discourse, as opposed to the group or thematic exhibition, or the events of biennials and international surveys? What issues,both practical and ideational, logistical and methodological, is the solo exhibition explicitly concerned with? How might a genealogy of the solo exhibition propose the relevance and scope of this typology today?

João Ribas (b. 1979, Braga, Portugal) is Curator at the MIT List Visual Arts Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was previously Curator at The Drawing Center, in New York. His recent exhibitions include In the Holocene (MIT List Visual Arts Center) an exhibition on art and speculation spanning from the 19th to the 21st centuries, and exhibitions of the work of Amalia Pica, Joachim Koester, Akram Zaatari, Cheyney Thompson, The Otolith Group, Stan VanDerBeek, Otto Piene, Frances Stark, and Matt Mullican, among others. He has been a contributor to numerous publications, including Contemporary Art: From 1989 to the Present (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013) and Realism Materialism Art (CCS Bard, forthcoming). His recent publications include Cheyney Thompson (Walter Koenig; Amalia Pica (MCA Chicago); Otto Piene: Lichtballett (MIT List Visual Arts Center, 2012) and an edited volume of the writings of Frances Stark (MIT List, 2010). He is the winner of four consecutive AICA Exhibition Awards (2008–11) and of an Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award (2010). A visiting lecturer for institutions and organizations worldwide, and has been an adjunct professor at the School of Visual Arts, New York, and the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).

About The Speakers Series: Each semester the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College hosts a regular program of lectures by the foremost artists, curators, art historians, and critics of our day, situating the school and museum’s concerns within the larger context of contemporary art production and discourse. Lectures are open to students and faculty, as well as to the general public, and will also be documented through video and/or audio recordings, which will reside in the CCS Bard Library and Archives.Sponsored by: Center for Curatorial Studies.

Degree Recital: Xinyue Zhang, bass

Monday, May 13, 20138 pm

Magentic Interactions on Iron Oxide Nanoparticles

Investigation of Coating Effects on Synthetic and Biological Ferrihydrite

Tuesday, May 14, 201312 pm

RKC 115

A lecture byThelma BerquoCandidate for the position in Physics

I will report on the investigation of interactions of the antiferromagnetic iron oxide ferrihydrite by comparing magnetic properties of synthetic uncoated and coated nanoparticles. Four different coating agents (sugar, alginate, lactate and ascorbate) were employed to prepare sub-samples from the same batch of ferrihydrite, and both magnetic and non-magnetic techniques were used to characterize the samples. I will present results showing that coating agent caused a dramatic change in the magnetic properties of these nanoparticles. In addition, I will show how the results obtained from studying synthetic ferrihydrite can help us to better understand the magnetic properties of Fe microbial mat deposited on hydrothermal vents at Loihi Seamount (Hawaii).

Wednesday, May 15, 201312 pm

RKC 111

A lecture byAndrew SkinnerCandidate for the position in Physics

In the transmon quantum bit, or qubit, current oscillates back and forth between two superconducting islands separated by a Josephson tunnel junction. One expects from conservation of momentum and energy that the switching of the current would cause the substrate to vibrate. These quantized lattice vibrations are known as phonons. For a representative model transmon we derive the phonon emission pattern and numerically integrate the device's corresponding decoherence and relaxation rates.Sponsored by: Division of Science, Mathematics, and Computing.

Degree Recital: James Haber, horn

Wednesday, May 15, 20138 pm

László Z. Bitó '60 Conservatory BuildingJames Haber, horn, began his musical studies under the loving encouragement of his mother, Mezzo-Soprano Caroline Chanin. At the age of five he started studying violin, but after three unsuccessful years of Suzuki book 1 switched to trumpet. For the next eight years he studied with Jazz musician Bucky Milam, attending the Litchfield Jazz Festival in 2006 and 2007.

Around this time James picked up the French horn, suggested by his father, and began studying with Ankush Kumar Bahl and later Marjorie Callaghan of Western Connecticut State University. During these years, James played with the Western Connecticut Youth Orchestra under the direction of Maestro’s Anush Kumar Bahl and Petko Dimitrov, in addition to playing in the Norwalk Youth Symphony under Maestro Tara Simoncic. He also performed with the Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra, where he narrated “Peter and the Wolf” in 2008.

Later that year James was accepted to the Juilliard School’s Pre-College Division, studying horn with Julia Pilant and composition with Manuel Sosa. In 2009 James enrolled at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music where he studied with Roland Pandolfi. The summer after his freshman year, James caught a fly ball at a Cleveland Indian’s game, a good omen for the years ahead. After one year at Oberlin, James transferred to the Bard College Conservatory of Music where he now studies with Julia Pilant, Julie Landsman, Jeffery Lang, and Barbara Jöstlein. He is also pursuing a joint-degree in History and Asian Studies at Bard College.

Since transferring to Bard, James has played with the new music group, Contemporaneous; where he also serves as Out-reach Coordinator. He has participated in a variety of summer festivals, including the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music, and the Atlantic Brass Quintet Seminar. In 2012, he accompanied both the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony and the Bard College Conservatory Orchestra on tours of China and Taiwan. James is expected to graduate in 2014.

Thursday, May 16, 201312 pm

Degree Recital: Hyunhak Kim, tenor

Thursday, May 16, 20134 pm

László Z. Bitó '60 Conservatory BuildingKorean tenor Hyunhak Kim is a second-year student in the Bard College Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program, where he currently studies voice with Patricia Misslin. He earned his bachelor’s degree in music education at Cheong-ju University and studied voice with Heungwoo Park in Korea. He performed the role of Matt in the world premiere of Four Sisters by Elena Langer in 2012 and appeared as a soloist with Sanford Sylvan in Mendelssohn’s Elijah with the American Symphony Orchestra in Bard’s Fisher Center for the Performing Arts. Kim attended the World Millal Choir Festival in Germany and performed with them at Carnegie Hall in 2010 and 2011.Sponsored by: Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program.

Urban Renewal

Saturday, May 18, 20132 pm

Fisher Center, LUMA TheaterTickets: Free, reservations requiredUrban Renewal is a meditation on perception, public policy, and the significance of the buildings we live in, from a child's rigorously unsentimental point of view. The multimedia solo performance maps an experience of growing up in Chicago in the 1960s, caught in the crosshairs of power and history. This is a work-in-progress presentation by writer, designer, and performer Kyle deCamp in collaboration with videomaker Joshua Thorson.Sponsored by: Fisher Center; Live Arts Bard.

Degree Recital: Barrett Radziun, tenor

Sunday, May 19, 20133 pm

László Z. Bitó '60 Conservatory BuildingTenor Barrett Radziun has appeared on opera, oratorio, and recital stages throughout the United States. Described by Cleveland Classical as "brilliant in his solo performances,” Radziun’s recent engagements include tenor soloist in Bach’s St. John Passion, Mendelssohn’s Elijah with members of the American Symphony Orchestra, the world premier of Elena Langer’s opera Four Sisters, Monteverdi’s Vespro della beata Vergine (1610), Dubois’ The Seven Last Words of Christ, and Bach’s Cantata No. 80. Radziun was the first place winner of Thursday Musical’s 2011 Young Artist Competition, and was selected as a finalist in the 2011 Schubert Club Scholarship Competition. Radziun is an alumnus of music programs including SongFest, the Hawaii Performing Arts Festival, Amherst Early Music Festival, Oberlin’s Baroque Performance Institute, and Seattle’s Accademia d’Amore Baroque Opera Workshop. His teachers include Lorraine Nubar, Carol Eikum and Elizabeth Grefsheim. Radziun holds a Bachelor of Music degree in Vocal Performance magna cum laude from Northwestern College, and he is currently pursuing a Master of Music Degree in Vocal Arts at the Bard College Conservatory of Music in New York.Sponsored by: Bard Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program.